1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to the field of computer networks. More specifically, the invention relates to a method which indicates what sources of information a user has consulted or has linked to on a computer information network, such as the World Wide Web.
2. Background Information
Of the many uses of computers, one of the main purposes is to acquire information, of which there are several pathways. One technique is to store and retrieve information directly from the computer that an individual is using, such as from internal memory or from diskettes or tapes directly attached to the computer. In fact, the personal computer was first marketed as being a "stand-alone" computer that was not connected or networked with a larger computer or outside memory. Another technique, which has grown explosively, is to connect the computer that an individual is using, called a client, to a computer network and acquire stored information on other computers, called servers. These computer networks continuously expand so that now an individual using a personal computer had access to infinitely more information than could be stored on his/her own computer. One such worldwide computer network of information is the Internet and various computerized methods to access the information on the Internet have developed. The World Wide Web (the web) accesses the Internet. The web is a computer network of interconnected servers and clients wherein information can be obtained simply by entering the address where the information is stored, its Universal Resource Locator (URL).
In the Internet and other computer environments which cross reference computer documents or interactive programs, hypertext is an approach to information management where nonsequential information is stored in nodes and the nodes are interconnected by links. The nodes may be in the same document, another document in the same computer client, or on another computer server. Thus, hypertext information management in a computerized system, such as the Internet, allows the user to retrieve information by jumping from topic to topic, from document to document, from node to node. Typically, web documents are accessed by entering the address, its Universal Resource Locator (URL), for that node. The user can directly type in the URL or the URL may be embedded in a link which is highlighted or otherwise featured text or image on which the user may move the cursor or the mouse pointer. The link contains the URL of the node and the user then initiates some computer action, such as clicking a computer mouse or entering a key stroke, etc., to connect to the link and display the information contained in that link. Nodes might contain various kinds of data, an online and real-time computer space of hypermedia commercial, educational, and entertaining information, e.g., text, graphics, audio, video, computer-animated images, film clips of animated scenes, digital sound, etc. Examples of hypertext languages include HyperText Markup Language (HTML) or HYPERCARD.RTM.. No matter where it originates, every web document or page uses HTML.
When a user travels through the web or any computer information management system, she finds it handy to know if she has visited that information site before, so various web browsing software or other hypertext software keeps a history of the various nodes or links that the user has traversed. The software indicates if a particular link has been traversed previously changing some feature of the text, e.g., color, font, underline, etc., but this is applicable only for textual links of alphanumeric characters. In other words, only those links that are in words or other textual format indicate if the link has been travelled.
The newer standards for hypertext links, however, are graphical images or pictures or bit map links wherein a region in the picture can define a hypertext link. There are no commercially available hypertext information software, such as World Wide Web browsers, that indicate in the graphical image if that link has been previously traversed.